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Opposition to Donald Trumps Cabinet nominations mounted on Capitol Hill and across the country Tuesday, as Senate Democrats boycotted two scheduled committee votes and dozens of people were arrested at a series of protests nationwide. Led by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee stalled the confirmations of treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin and health and human services secretary nominee Tom Price by refusing to attend the committee meeting. Under committee rules, if no Democrats attend the hearing, the committee cant vote. The lawmakers accused Mnuchin and Price of lying to the committees during their nomination hearings. Amid the Democratic boycott, protesters staged a sit-in to block the entrance to the office of Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as a protest against Tom Prices nomination. At least 47 people were arrested. Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee also delayed a vote on the confirmation of Jeff Sessions for attorney general Tuesday by making extended speeches. This is California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein: "Instead, he has been the fiercest, most dedicated and most loyal promoter in Congress of the Trump agenda and has played a critical role in the clearinghouse for policy and philosophy to undergird the implementation of that agenda. With this in mind, I must vote no."

Jeff Sessionss confirmation has faced a series of protests over his opposition to the Voting Rights Act and his history of making racist comments. On Monday, about 10 members of the NAACP, including President Cornell William Brooks, were arrested at a sit-in at Sessionss office in Mobile, Alabama. It was the second NAACP sit-in against Sessionss confirmation. On Tuesday, retired Army Colonel Ann Wright disrupted the Senate Judiciary Committee in protest of Sessions.

Ann Wright: "No to racism! No to the ban on refugees! Wait! Oh, wait! Oh! Oww! Ill go out, but you dont need to drag me. Ive got a hip replacement. Im 70 years old, and I can make it out on my own. But no to racism! No to hate! No to Jeff Sessions! No to the ban on refugees!"

More protests against Jeff Sessions and Trumps other Cabinet nominations erupted Tuesday. In New York City, thousands of protesters gathered outside the home of Senator Chuck Schumer, calling on him to oppose Trumps Cabinet picks. In a separate protest also in New York City, 11 protesters, including Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, were arrested blocking traffic outside Trump Tower to oppose the nominations. In Chicago, at least seven protesters were arrested after hundreds staged a sit-in at the Federal Building to demand Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth vote against billionaire Betsy DeVos for education secretary, which they did. Nevertheless, DeVos was among three of Trumps Cabinet picks who were approved by Senate committees Tuesday. The Senate education committee voted 12-11 to approve DeVos in a straight party vote, even though The Washington Post reports DeVos appears to have plagiarized parts of her written answers submitted to the Senate committee. Also on Tuesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 16-7 to approve former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as energy secretary and voted 16-6 to approve Montana Congressmember Ryan Zinke to head the Interior Department. DeVos, Perry and Zinke will now all face full Senate votes on their confirmation. The full Senate also voted Tuesday to confirm Elaine Chao to become transportation secretary.

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Lawmakers Push Anti-Protest Laws as Mass Resistance to Trump Sweeps U.S. - Democracy Now!

Clive McFarlane Telegram & Gazette Staff @CliveMcFarlane

In these slippery, Trump-stirred times of trouble and turmoil, I search frantically to find sure footing because through the mist of our Muslim neighbors' tears, I see clearly what's in store for them if we who care for our democracy should stumble and fall.

And to the north I see worshipers at a Quebec mosque being slaughtered - six killed and 19 injured. Authorities say they were shot down by a man with extremists views, a man who claims to be an avid supporter of our president, a president who on the eve of this killing spree had targeted Muslims in a travel ban to this country.

To the south, I see a Texas mosque gutted by fire, and from all across the country come stories of girls wearing hijabs being harassed, Muslim women being threatened by knife-wielding harassers and Muslim shopkeepers being peppered with anti-Muslim slurs.

And in the wake of these atrocities, I hear a clear and comforting voice rise above the din to say:

"The people who commit these acts mean to test our resolve and weaken our values. We will not close our minds. We will open our hearts."

It is the voice of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and not that of our president, who is constitutionally obligated to preserve the greatest democracy in the world, but who instead, through his press secretary, Sean Spicer, used the Canadian tragedy to buckle down on his travel ban.

"Its a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant, and why the president is taking steps to be proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to our nations safety and security, he told us at his daily briefing on Monday.

And I wait to hear the voice of dissent from leaders of influential Muslim-majority countries, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but silence prevails, and not unexpectedly because both have long manipulated extremism within their borders to further their own self-interests, the same self-interest mirrored by Mr. Trump when he declined to include in his Muslim ban those countries in which his business interests raise towers in benediction to his ego.

Oh, how disappointing it was to see at Monday's press conference an Indian-American reporter groveling at the president's feet.

This Indian-American reporter, whose roots sprout from a country deemed the largest democracy in the world and which is home to the world's second largest Muslim population, had not a single word to say about the president's travel ban.

He seemed to be more mindful of Mr. Trump's sizable business interest in India, business interests described by NPR as being "more than anywhere else outside North America."

So this Indian-American reporter noted how the president of India, Narendra Modi, has spoken to President Trump three times since Mr. Trump's "victory to make America great again."

"Both leaders, I understand, are on the same boat, because both are thinking the same," he said, before adding, "India is waiting to welcome President Trump."

And I realize now how vulnerable, like a dinghy caught in a raging ocean storm, this little democracy of ours is; and I can see clearly that the sure footing I seek lies not on a common ground girdled by self-interest, like those who protest only when their individual self-interests are at stake.

The sure footing I seek lies on the common ground staked out by "we the people," people like former acting U.S. attorney general Sally Yates, whom Mr. Trump fired for refusing to defend his travel ban, people like civil rights lawyers, people like many in the diverse groups pushing back against Mr. Trump, people who are guided not by self-interest but by the interest of our democracy and of our humanity.

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Clive McFarlane: Democracy on shaky ground - Worcester Telegram

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The rise of antiestablishment parties in Poland, France, Germany is identified as a major danger to Europe in the report published Tuesday, which is entitled Freedom in the World 2017.

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Freedom House says populism is a threat to global democracy, claiming that xenophobia and religious intolerance go against the fundamental values of democracy.

Angela Merkels call for a ban on the full face veil towards the end of last year was also highlighted as cause for concern in the report, which says the German Chancellors remarks seemed to pander to to anti-Muslim sentiment.

Europe can no longer be taken for granted as a bastion of democratic stability due to Russian interference and the migrant crisis according to the report, which accuses Russia of meddling in European elections by pushing populist and nationalist parties and spreading fake news and propaganda.

Another sign that global democracy is in distress, the report says, is that a number of countries held referendums in 2016. Deriding the votes as a radical reduction to majority rule, it complains that direct votes circumvent the structures and safeguards of democracy.

Asserting that democracy is more than just elections, Freedom House outlines a truly democratic system as one which hasa free press, independent courts, legal protections for minorities, a robust opposition, and unfettered civil society groups.

During the 2014 European Parliament election campaign, civil society groups received $6 million (4.77 million) in funding from Hungarian financier Soross Open Society Foundations.

The democratic election of populist leaders in Eastern and Central Europe is also identified in the paper as a threat to democracy.

The election of, and subsequent governing by Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland, and Fidesz in Hungary, arebranded a menace in the report, and cited as examples of counter-democratic transitions.

Along with attacking the two countries governments for having repudiated liberal values, Freedom House claims that in providing economic benefits to its core constituents referring to how the party has generous welfare policies PiS is using the economic power of the state for party political ends.

Co-author of the report, Arch Puddington, wrote: We see leaders and nations pursuing their own narrow interests without meaningful constraints or regard for the shared benefits of global peace and freedom.

These trends are starting to undo the international order of the past quarter-century and have undermined respect for fundamental freedoms and democracy, he said.

Open Society Foundations frequently partners with Freedom House, and the Hungarian billionaires grant-making network was revealed to be a financial backer of the American NGO in documents published by DCLeaks.

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Soros-Linked NGO: Support for Right Wing Parties in Europe 'Threatens Democracy' - Breitbart News

The United States is no longer a full democracy, according to the highly regarded Economist Intelligence Unit, which each year compiles a Democracy Index, providing "a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories.

The U.S., a standard-bearer of democracy for the world, has become a flawed democracy, as popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions has declined, explains the introduction to the freshly released Democracy Index.

That would be a troubling announcement in any week.

But coming in the first week of the presidency of Donald Trump, a man who has claimed that election systems are rigged, who lies about supposed voter fraud, and who attacks the media outlets who call him out for those lies, the announcement is all the more unsettling.

For those of us who have for many years worried about the vulnerable state of democracy in America, the news is even more troubling because the Democracy Index analysis reminds us that this is about a lot more than Donald Trump.

Popular trust in government, elected representatives and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the U.S. This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of Mr. Trump as U.S. president in November 2016, explains the analysis. By tapping a deep strain of political disaffection with the functioning of democracy, Mr. Trump became a beneficiary of the low esteem in which U.S. voters hold their government, elected representatives and political parties, but he was not responsible for a problem that has had a long gestation. The U.S. has been teetering on the brink of becoming a flawed democracy for several years, and even if there had been no presidential election in 2016, its score would have slipped below 8.00.

To be ranked as a full democracy, a country must maintain an 8.00 rating based on five measures: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. The U.S. rating was 8.05 last year. It is now 7.98; and index ranking for the U.S. has fallen to No. 21 just behind Japan, just ahead of the Republic of Cabo Verde. The United States is not ranked with the worlds authoritarian states. But the U.S. is no longer ranked in the full democracy category with Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And it is ranked well below social democracies such as Norway (No. 1 on the 2016 Democracy Index), Iceland (No. 2) and Sweden (No. 3).

For small-d democrats who are worried about Trump and Trumpism, the latest Democracy Index provides vital perspective. The new president is a bad player. He disrespects and disregards democratic values, encourages distrust of democratic infrastructure, and expresses disdain for the essential source of information in a democracy: a free and skeptical and questioning press that is willing to speak truth to power.

But even before Trump entered the presidential race, the crisis was real, and it was metastasizing.

Robert W. McChesney and I made this point in our 2013 book "Dollarocracy" and our 2016 book "People Get Ready" (both Nation Books). We used the Democracy Index and other measures to warn that the infrastructure of democracy was being undermined by a combination of big-money politics, lobbying abuses that tip the balance of power to corporate interests, underfunded and dysfunctional media, assaults on labor rights, the gutting of voting rights, and the manipulation of election systems by partisans.

Undermining the infrastructure of democracy necessarily undermines confidence in democracy which we suggested would create a crisis for the United States, a country that already has embarrassingly low levels of voter participation when compared with fully functional democracies. The 2016 Democracy Index provides a fresh measure of that crisis, noting:

The decline in the U.S. democracy score reflects an erosion of confidence in government and public institutions over many years. According to the Pew Research Center, public trust in government has been on a steady downward trend since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Donald Trump won the November 2016 presidential election by exploiting this trust deficit and tapping into Americans anger and frustration with the functioning of their democratic institutions and representatives. He positioned himself as the insurgent candidate, a political outsider taking on a rigged system who would drain the swamp in Washington, D.C. However, his candidacy was not the cause of the deterioration in trust but rather a consequence of it.

Its fair to quibble with that last line; at the very least, Trumps rhetoric reinforces and extends the deterioration in faith in democracy. And there should be no doubt that Trumps presidency will make things worse just five days into his term, he was promising a major inquiry into voter fraud, which even Republicans acknowledge is almost nonexistent. But Trumps political rise is a symptom rather than the cause of a broader democracy crisis.

These realities call for a multitiered response to Trump and Trumpism.

It begins with resistance to the most dangerous of Trumps policies and proposals, and with the requirement of solidarity with those who are most threatened by those policies and proposals. But it also can and must address the democracy crisis.

It is more necessary than ever to embrace movements to get big money out of politics and restore ethics to government, to defend voting rights and make it easier to cast ballots, and to reform our media and sustain a truly free press. Groups such as Common Cause and Public Citizen, Free Speech for People and Move to Amend, FairVote and Free Press are working in these areas. They have track records of success, even in the most difficult of circumstances, and they recognize the importance of state and local initiatives.

The resistance to Trump begins with opposition to immediate threats to civil rights and civil liberties, and to the dismantling of safety-net policies, programs and protections. But it must also address the threat posed by an ongoing decay of democracy, which has as its consequence the empowerment of a Donald Trump and the rise of Trumpism.

John Nichols, associate editor of The Capital Times, is a co-founder, with Robert W. McChesney, of the media reform network Free Press.jnichols@madison.comand @NicholsUprising

Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.

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John Nichols: Once a 'full democracy,' the US now a 'flawed democracy' - Madison.com

New York Times

Why Democracy Prevailed in Gambia New York Times It was nothing short of a democratic coup. So was it an exception, or proof that African leaders are increasingly willing to demand and enforce democracy in the region? Democracy's record throughout the African continent has been checkered in ... Gambia: The Day Democracy WonAllAfrica.com A victory for democracy and Africa in GambiaAmerica Magazine The Gambia: Adama Barrow's peaceful rise to power does not mean democracy for rest of AfricaInternational Business Times UK all 82 news articles »

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Why Democracy Prevailed in Gambia - New York Times